About Me

Buford C. Terrell
Controlled substances laws and their consequences have been the center of my professional life for over fifteen years. I host a public interest television program in Houston, “Drugs, Crime, and Politics” , produced by the Drug Policy forum of Texas, and have done so for most of its ten-year history. Before my retirement, I taught a seminar, “Controlled Substances Law” for many years at South Texas College of Law.
In this blog I intend to explore the features and consequences of those laws, especially the unintended consequences, and look at the need for, and possibility of, changing them. Don’t expect a lot of breaking news or current events, although there will be some. My approach will be more historical and theoretical. I hope to get a lot of criticism – good, bad, and otherwise – and to start some good, heated discussions.

Sunday, February 24, 2013

Marijuana Farming

Marijuana
Farming

Press
releases from the DEA and police agencies point with alarm to western pot
farmers who, they claim, are wreaking environmental havoc.But what they do not point out is that this
damage is not the result of marijuana farming; it is the result of illegal pot
farming.It is part of the excessive
costs of the extremely costly, totally ineffective failed “War on Drugs”.

Most
of these stories take place in National Forests, where illicit marijuana
patches have been planted, but a few of the growths were planted by trespassers
on private lands with absentee owners.

The
damages include stream pollution by fertilizer and pesticide run-off, soil
erosion from improper tillage, trash (including fecal waste), and barbed wire –
damaging to wildlife and unwary hikers.Some plots are even protected by booby-traps: trip wires connected to
explosives.

Dangerous
marijuana growing even occurs in cities.Rental houses, often in exclusive residential areas, are turned into
grow houses.These all have extensive
grow light, ventilation, and irrigation systems and frequently steal electric
power by wiring around electric meters.Very little of the wiring is done by licensed electricians and none of
them are inspected by local government code enforcers.These houses present serious fire dangers to
the surrounding neighborhoods.

None
of this damage and peril has to happen.It is the result of barring legitimate farmers and their good agricultural
practices from growing marijuana and turning it over to outlaws with no
relations with or obligations to the community.If marijuana were legal, legitimate farmers would grow it.They would protect their fields and prevent
environmental damage, just as they do when they grow cotton or cabbage, corn or
broccoli.

Corruption
of the production system is an unavoidable consequence of prohibition.The destructive effects on marijuana farming
are merely the latest examples.

Methamphetamine
was developed in the teens of the last century.It became a pharmaceutical best-seller in the 1930s and was still an
industrial leader when congress tightened regulation of stimulants in the
1970s.Now the news is full of scare
stories about illegal meth labs, with their toxic wastes and explosions in
residential areas.

But
they never mention the legal labs that safely manufacture methamphetamine to be
prescribed for children with ADHD under the name Desoxyn.These legal meth labs don’t explode and don’t
start fires.They do pass EPA and FDA
inspections.

The
Merck company has produced legal cocaine for over a century, and the entire
current legal cocaine supply for the U. S. is made by an affiliate of the Coca-Cola
company as a by-product of the manufacture of decocainized leaves for
flavoring.Neither of these companies
has acted in an environmentally irresponsible way.

But
when the DEA attempted to suppress illegal cocaine production in the Andes, the
now-illegal farmers switched to slash-and-burn destruction of rain forests and
polluted their surroundings with chemical wastes from coca processing.Once again, outlawing farmers created bad
neighbors.

Alcohol
Prohibition created both dangerous home processing and rural devastation.When Al Capone sold booze in Chicago, much of
the alcohol was produced by small, hidden stills in urban tenement
apartments.These bathtub stills often
exploded and started fires in tenements in every major city.Southern moonshiners still trash forests and
streams around their stills, just as they did during their Prohibition heyday.Now Anheuser-Busch and Jack Daniels are
positive assets to their communities.

It’s
time to legalize marijuana and let legitimate farmers displace the dangerous
outlaws now running – and ruining the business.Tomatoes grow in zoned, safe hothouses, and wheat is grown without
fertilizer run-off or topsoil erosion.And when was the last time a load of cucumbers was hijacked? Good farmers are good neighbors, whether they
are raising beer (barley and rice), rum (sugar cane), whiskey (corn and rye),
or marijuana.

1 comment:

The outlaw drug enforcers who create the market for bad ecology could care less about the environmental and human costs of cannabis prohibition - - they exploit the legitimate fear surrounding it, like politicians use wars, to justify their existence and paychecks.